A Year In The Life Of Eric Rickman: 1960

The ’60s. Who could’ve predicted the revolutionary decade ahead? One sign was an incoming U.S. president who was not only more youthful and liberal than most of his predecessors, but Catholic, ferchrissake. Automotively speaking, we might’ve been tipped by unprecedented developments or refinements such as domestic compacts, jet cars, Kent Fuller’s slender slingshots, Bruce Crower’s stock-block Indy car, dual-quad Chrysler products, small superchargers for small engines, four-wheel-drive performance cars, a back-motored dragster made mostly from magnesium, a 170-mph Chevy “research vehicle” with an all-aluminum V8, and flagrant violations of a fuel ban cracked wide open by the March ’59 nitro binge in Bakersfield.

1/113Kiddies, don’t try this at home! “Rick” would go to any length—and height—to produce a unique action shot. This down-track ladder location might’ve made another dragstrip operator faint with fear, but Lions was managed by Mickey Thompson, who also happened to be steering the race car. Moreover, burnouts had yet to be invented; those smoking tires and blurred wheels tell us that Mickey’s blown-Tempest digger is hauling ass when it passes so close to the ladder. Knowing Rickman as we did, he was likely disappointed upon viewing the developed film that whoever picked up his backup camera was standing too far away to fill even half the (square) frame. Fifty-one years later, we respectfully disagree.

Now, imagine not only witnessing these earthshaking innovations in person, but documenting them on film—and getting paid to travel to wherever they were happening. Only one person on the entire planet fits that description: the late Eric Rickman, HOT ROD’s chief photographer in the ’50s and ’60s. Possibly no one on Earth could’ve done his job as consistently well, as is illustrated in this continuing series. Beyond educating and entertaining our readers (and us), these year-by-year installments are becoming nearly day-by-day indices to a hobby, sport, and industry that exploded between 1955, when Petersen Publishing Co. (PPC) started archiving its staffers’ film, and the mid-’60s. The 100-plus photographs appearing in each HOT ROD Deluxe are making it much easier for editors to pinpoint and research significant people, places, products, and vehicles in back issues of Petersen publications. We expect you to benefit similarly in the not-so-distant future, when Source Interlink Media completes a company-wide mission to post all its published articles online.

In the meantime, HOT ROD Deluxe will continue to do the dirty work for you. For this installment, we viewed every single frame on all 500-plus rolls of medium-format black-and-white film Eric Rickman exposed during 1960, in addition to the 35mm film he started shooting late in the racing season. Whittling those thousands of negatives down to what you see on these pages was both painful and joyful. Locating those same subjects in fragile copies of HOT ROD, Car Craft, Rod & Custom, and countless Petersen “one-shots” was another time-sucking task—for two people. You and I are blessed by historian Greg Sharp’s amazing memory, knowledge, and enthusiasm, without which the following photo captions would contain far fewer details and way more blunders. Now, it’s your turn: Please continue to fill in the blanks, via snail mail or email, and to correct (and forgive) any mistakes.